'The Drop'. Starring Tom Hardy, James Gandolfini and Noomi Rapace. Directed by Michael R. Roskam.
Do you like watching people smoke, drink, kill and caress a pit bull dog? If you do you'll like 'The Drop'.
Based on a short story by Dennis Lehane, who also wrote the film's script, 'The Drop' stars Tom Hardy, as Bob, a Brooklyn bar tender. "I just tend the bar," Bob Says. He works in a very busy bar that was once owned by his cousin Marv, played by the late James Gandolfini. But eight years ago or so, a group of Chechen gangsters took over the bar and turned it as a drop for illlegal crime money.
Marv still seethes about that. Then a hold-up in the bar, maybe makes him even more angry.
Enter Nadia (Noona Rapace) who helps Bob save a wounded pit bull. To make things even more frightening, along comes a creepy stalker(Matthew Schoenarts), who claims to be a killer, the pit bull's past owner and Nadia's one-time lover.
Nearly all the people in the film are either crooks, killers or both. Nadia may not be. One man who isn't crooked is Detective Ortiz (John Torres). He knows the bar is a front for organized crime. Yet how can you prove this when everybody's closemouthed. And if they tell the police anything, they can be killed.
Belgian director Michael Roskam has given us a sometimes slow moving but scary take on criminals working in gritty working class neighbourhoods in Brooklyn. Nobody here it seems usually talks in anything but monosyllables.
"I was feared," Marv boasts to Bob, Here, Gandolfini is a fine actor, playing in his last film role. In the film, as usual Gandolfini is way overweight and smokes many cigarettes. I guess Brooklyn gangsters believe that cigarettes and alcohol aren't dangerous when compared with real live bullets.
In any case, in 'The Drop' the British actor Tom Hardy overshadows James Gandolfini. Hardy is the film's real star. He looks so innocent and acts so kindly. Yet in 'The Drop' it seems everbody's got blood on their hands.
